population growth

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

How the pace of technological progress is redrawing the political map
PhysOrg
From power stations to factories, thermostats to smartphones, information to entertainment, the world is driven—and controlled—by digital technology. So it's no surprise that political and economic success, for businesses and nations, depends on how current they are with advances in technology. That's why Bhaskar Chakravorti and colleagues at the Fletcher School have created the Digital Evolution Index, a first-of-its-kind map of how, where and at what speed the use of digital technologies is spreading across the globe.

Global MPI 2015: Key findings
Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative
The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) provides a range of resources. The Global MPI was updated in June 2015 and now covers 101 countries in total, which are home to 75 per cent of the world’s population, or 5.2 billion people. Of this proportion, 30 per cent of people (1.6 billion) are identified as multidimensionally poor. In June 2015, our analysis of global multidimensional poverty span a number of topics, such as destitution, regional and sub-national variations in poverty, the composition of poverty.

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

How mobile phones can save, not waste, energy
World Economic Forum
The mobile industry is experiencing explosive growth worldwide, fuelled by almost 7 billion subscribers and an ever-growing demand for data traffic. However, the energy efficiency of mobile networks remains extremely low. Both base stations and smartphones regularly waste 70% of the energy consumed as heat. The underlying power architecture used in mobile communications still relies on outdated technology developed during the 1930s. The impact of relying on such outdated technology is huge.

U.N. Predicts New Global Population Boom
MIT Technology Review
A new analysis suggests that the world’s population will keep rising through 2100, and not flatten around 2050 as has been widely assumed. Such an increase would have huge implications, but the prediction’s reliability is debatable, given that it does not take into account future hardships a large population would likely face. According to the new analysis by researchers at the United Nations and several academic institutions, there is an 80 percent chance that the world’s population, now 7.2 billion, won’t stop at nine billion in 2050, but will instead be between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by 2100.

The broad objective of the World Bank’s India Country Partnership Strategy Report (CPS) for the period 2013-2017 is to support poverty reduction and shared prosperity in India. The Report states that between 2005 and 2010, India’s share of global GDP increased from 1.8 to 2.7% and 53 million people were lifted out of poverty. But it also states that with population growth, it has proved difficult to reduce the absolute number of poor at a rapid pace and 400 million Indians still live in poverty. Each of the seven low income states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan; Uttar Pradesh) and seven special category states (Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim, Uttrakhand) have poverty rates that are higher than that of the more advanced states. The low income states, where a large majority of the poorest 200 million Indians reside, are a priority for the World Bank Country Strategy funding during 2013-2017 (estimated to be $ 5 billion annually with 60 percent lending through direct financing of state projects of which half will go to low income and special category states).

India, both in the above mentioned and its advanced states (e.g. Punjab, Haryana, Kerala) is undergoing a massive rural- urban transformation- one of the largest in the 21st century. For the first time since independence, India has seen a greater absolute growth in urban population. The number of towns has increased from about 5000 in 2001 to 8,000 in 2011 and some 53 cities have a population exceeding one million. Today 30.1 percent of the population lives in urban areas and the share is expected to rise to 50% in the next 20 years (with urban India expected to generate 70% of its GDP by 2030). Though villages vastly outnumber towns in India (660,000 villages as per Census 2011), the construct of these villages is changing as the economy grows.